FAQ
New to journal-based roleplay? Everything you need to know is probably explained here. If you'd like further explanation on anything pertaining to this particular game or roleplaying in general, feel free to ask right here! Sooo. Doom Clock? Yep! Dethklock was taken. So was doomsday. Deathclock remains unregistered, but that's beside the point. YES, clocks will be playing a role in plot somewhere down the line. And NO, this game isn't solely based on the Clock Tower franchise, though I'll admit that there's a few elements lifted from the games as an afterthought of this coincidence. This is a plot-driven game? How's that different from any other LJRP out there? Rather than dumping your character in Location X, giving him a set of IC-ly assumed information, holding his hand, giving him everything he'll ever need and leaving him to his own devices to enjoy his time away from his world of origin, Doom Clock dumps him in Location X, gives him very little IC information, and leaves him to his own devices. A combination of the need to get the hell back where he belongs, a questionable desire to find out more about this place, and a few...uh, circumstances will compel him to actively find a way out of the mess he somehow got himself into. And sweetie, you can forget about getting put up in some swanky apartment in the Village; The Established Order here isn't as kind as your gods and headmasters and other various benefactors out there. In fact, they thrive on your misery (and this will be explained further down the page). And is there one huge underlying plot here? Why, yes. Yes, there is. It will become more evident with time, the exploration of different areas, and the discovery of information. Oh, and one more thing? This game will end soon after that plot is revealed. Detective work For the nosy journalist in everyone who just has to know what the hell is going on. Characters may or may not come across various information about the world in the form of diaries, journals, letters, notes, pictures, EVPs and more. These are handed out sporadically by mods upon character arrival and can also be found in buildings and can be obtained through events. What is survival horror? Think Resident Evil, with all its good points (supernatural ass-kicking) and all its quirks (fetch quests, escort missions, and puzzles). The jist of it is this: characters are put in a situation where they rely on evasion and logic to survive rather than strength and powers. Wikipedia has an article on this you can browse through. ...this means no powers, huh? Not exactly. They're there, but dormant. Powers will return to a character once they have hit full panic mode, immortality being the sole exception. My character can control the flow of time. Can they use this power to their advantage? They can, for a price to be determined by the same NPC who deals with sacrifices and premature deaths. That is to say, this as well is explained below. One of my character's powers includes summoning their weapon/s. How is that affected? No summoning of anything is allowed! With that said, it's perfectly fine for a character to have their weapon around if you've included it in the inventory section of your application; they'll just have to drag it everywhere they go. Fun times. You made a comparison to Resident Evil. Does this mean zombies? Yep! Though they and their otherworldly friends won't be making an appearance just quite yet. More information on "enemies" will be provided when the time comes. Can you expand on your premise a little/give more information on the game? Yes! Basically, your character wakes up in the as-of-yet unnamed forest with the number "365" tattooed somewhere they and others can see it (like on the wrist or the back of a hand or somewhere on the arms. Exactly where is of little importance). They'll notice that this number goes down with time, or if they commit something called a "transgression". No worries, though, there's ways to undo your wrongs and make up your days. Your character's countdown begins as soon he or she has entered the world. For most, this would mean that it starts with a character's first post or interaction with another character. If you're the type who likes to assume that your character has been around for a short while before posting, you can safely assume that the countdown began the day your replied to the taken characters post. Wait...rewind. "Transgressions"? Of course. Letting your days expire would be considered as being too nice, and the Order (most of them, anyway) are anything but. Here is the list of transgressions, and the penalty for each: * Saving a life. The reasons why are obvious: in a world that thrives off of the death of others, preventing a death? Not making any of the Powers happy, here. For this act, the savior would be fined, as it were, a whopping 100 days. * Giving birth to a child. You'd think that giving the world one more poor soul to leech off of would be a good thing, and indeed, it is, in a way. But giving birth is seen as trading your presence for that of another, and the result is your number of days dwindling down to just one. * Having consensual sex/partaking in sex acts with another will cost 75 days. Why? Because according to the Order, sex without strings is never just sex; you're in some effect sharing your life intimately with another being, and the beginnings of love can erupt from physical union. And even if love is not your intent, you're still subject to that fine. Unfair, huh? * Please see this page for more information! Rewards In this bizarro world, you get points for perpetuating the death and misfortune of others. * Watching someone die and doing nothing about it when you have the power to can up your life by 50 days. * Killing someone else gives a character half of their victim's remaining lifespan. ** To prevent loopholes in the system involving consented murder, the reward for killing the same person over and over again decreases over time. Kill someone once, you get half of their days. Kill someone twice, you get half of that allowed half. Kill someone three times...you get the idea. * Rape, as opposed to its counterpart, gives you 75 days of life. Unlike sex, you're taking something for yourself without the second party's consent. Sacrifice You can also barter with one of the specific NPCs for the life of another. This is also explained below. So what happens when my character runs out of time? If a character is unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at things) enough to have run their life's clock down to zero days, they die. Permanently. If and when this happens, this character will no longer be able to be applied for, and we can assume that they might as well be dead in their canon world as well, their life force consumed by this world. It sounds harsh, but there's ample opportunity to keep your number of days up! If you don't take them, well... Also? Things happen when a character permanently dies. What sort of things? You'll just have to wait to find out. And what happens when my character dies before the 365 days are up? Explained in the NPC section! :) My character is already dead/some form of undead creature/immortal/a fifteen foot robot. What now? For the purposes of this game, characters who are dead and gone in canon are resurrected (this is to include ghosts, skeletons, and zombies). Undead characters (read: vampires) still function as undead creatures (read: bloodlust is still strong as ever) and will still die at the end of 365 days. Whoever said that the last death is a peaceful one, anyway? And we all know that undead creatures (read: vampires) are not indestructible beings. Immortals are basically beings that have immortality as a power, and, as we've discussed, powers are stripped, and as it's a passive power, it's gone for good. Androids, robots, and the like are all now human. Congratulations, now it's actually a boy. PANIC Remember when you didn't ask about Clock Tower? This is one of the biggest elements drawn from the franchise. In the games, the controlled character has something of a Panic Meter. This raises when the character is spooked and confronted by enough ghosts. She'll eventually reach a Full Panic Mode in which she is extremely vulnerable. Doomclock has something like this, and it's affected by contact with the other world, your days left, events, and if your character is a wuss by default. Random fun fact: the Hinamizawa Syndrome is a lot like this system. So much so that there is no way to make this not look like the syndrome. Here are the stages: What's the Established Order? A group of NPCs who appear to run the world. There's not much known about them, but you can get the feeling that at they benefit from your death somehow. As of now, there's only one ambassador of the Order to make himself known. Thanatos Basileos Thanatos, as his name may or may not imply, is Death, personified as one creepy-as-fuck kid. He'll stop by to say hello to each "wanderer" personally upon arrival. And by that, I mean, he's the reason you're here and dying in the first place. He's also the guy you want to go to if you want to try to live longer or perform a sacrifice so someone else could live longer. Of course, even if you don't want to see him, he'll come to you eventually. *Once a character's year of life is up, Thanatos will come to eradicate them off of the plane of existence. You can either die peacefully, try to best the kid (you won't), or try to strike a deal with him. These deals can be many and vary depending on the person to die. For example, he might ask your character to murder the person in the game who is the most important to them in exchange for another year. Or he might ask for their sense of vision in exchange for a couple more months. *They can also appeal to him to sacrifice their own days to add to someone else's lifespan. It would work much like the above; Thanatos would want something in exchange, and again, this would vary according to the characters involved. *This again is variable, but Thanatos will take (he won't even make a bargain) something from a character who tries to use any time-bending powers to their advantage. Though this time, the severity of the price depends on how many days this person managed to add on to their life. *Though the circumstances of the characters' shared situation push them towards their deaths, Thanatos seems to be displeased by any life taken before its time. If someone is killed or dies by some mishap before the clock ticks down to zero, they will be revived with the price of only one day. It's curious, if you think about it too much... *Characters who murder to keep their lifespan up are not permitted to try to bargain with Thanatos, for themselves or others. Where will my character live? Setting up camp in the forest is always an option. There is also a village that is reachable by the characters at this point in time as well, which is probably your best bet. What will my character eat? There's no animals in the forest or fish in the lake, but you will find items that will help you out in that area in the village. And maybe not everyone in the Established Order is a heartless bastard and will be willing to help you out. What happens to my character if/when I go on hiatus? Anyone who has seen 1408 will know exactly what I'm talking about. Your character will wake up in their world of origin, remembering everything but brushing it aside as if it were a nightmare and continue living on their life (which is, unbeknown to them, the actual dream). When you get off of hiatus, they'll wake up, and surprise surprise! They're still here. IC, nobody has any clue of what this phenomenon is all about -- to the characters here that you'll leave when you hiatus, it's as if you're under one deep Sleeping Beauty-esque spell. Your countdown tattoos disappear, and you may even appear dead to some. What are the activity requirements for this game? Activity will be checked the first week of every month. As of now, the requirements are pretty lax, and mods will be checking for one of the following: * two posts * five instances of first-person threading/action tagging (basically, having your character reply to and interact in five posts in the doomclock community) * two logs * any combination of the three (for example: one post + one log, three reply threads + one post, etc.), except for one post + one reply thread. Yes, your character's countdown will continue if you are not active and yet are not on hiatus, but this could be seen as incentive to be active in the game. If you have more questions on activity, please feel free to ask! Activity requirements are subject to change if abused enough, but that won't ever happen, right? :) About that application... Everything you need to know will be found within the application copypasta! Can I apply for an OC/AU? At the moment, no. Sorry! OCs will become appable at a later date; however, non-canon AUs are not allowed. I want to app Cloud from Kingdom Hearts, but someone is already playing Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Can I still app for this character? As long as the two characters are different enough, yes. And this isn't only for Squeenix characters. Comic books are notorious for having many alternates of the same character. What about characters that have been played here before? As long as they aren't permanently dead, they're appable. With a full 365 days, in fact. What do I use my character's journal for? What do I post in each community? An HMD post in your character's journal would be nice, but it's not necessary. And because IC posts will be posted to a community rather than a journal, it's perfectly okay on our end that you use a journal you're already using for another game. @ doomclock IC posts and comment-spammy action tags are to be posted here. * Please tag all posts! Two separate tags for your character will be made as soon as you are accepted into the game, one that is simply Character Name for posts that you comment to and #Character Name for posts that you make. This makes it easier when the mods are conducting an activity check. * A good amount of interaction will undoubtedly happen face to face. At the moment, there are no two-way devices available (and no, devices brought from one's world of origin won't work). You are welcome to have your character leave notes for others in a message-in-a-bottle kind of way, but of course, this form of communication is strictly one-way. If a character runs across some transmission equipment, they can broadcast messages that will be picked up by everyone (or thing) with a radio. You can use this to your advantage by giving out distress calls/current locations/etc. Which may or may not be a safe thing to do, but...you know. @ doomclocklogs Third-person prose logs will go here! * Tagging works the same way as it does in the main comm. * We ask that you use the format found on the community's info page when posting. @ doomclockooc The OOC multipurpose comm. Here you say hi, say bye, say brb, say...anything, really. Category:Info